A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action - Review: 21.06.2013

Well, all good things must come to an end, and in the end for Jesse O'Mahoney, it's a return to mediocrity. This was easily the worst episode of the week.

EastEnders is broken. It's been bleeding viewers since the show jumped the shark ten years ago, bringing Zombie Den back from the grave. Diedrich Santer staunched the flow, but that was only papering over the cracks. Bryan Kirkwood ripped the soul of the programme apart, instilling his vision, instead of retaining its brand. Three iconic female characters were made totally unrecogniseable.

Whatever he's done to EastEnders, it's going to take time to repair. The Beales are being rebuilt, then the Mitchells need repairing. Janine, easily the most positive female character in the soap at the moment, and Bryan Kirkwood's crowning achievement, must move centre stage.

More importantly, Newman should smack out of hand any pandering to the brat pack of shallow,  irrelevant viewers who think this is a teen soap and that characters like Sharon don't matter. She should simply disregard any of those Kat-wannabe-fanbois, begging for Kat and Alfie to be separated. Alfie Moon was created for Kat as much as the Mitchells were created for Sharon. 

And Sid Owen must be prised from his Hollywood hideaway and convinced to return. It's what Patsy Palmer wants, and it should happen.

And the warts from the writers' room must be surgically removed. That includes the man who wrote the last two episodes. I gave him a pass last night. Tonight, he failed.

Jacqueline Jossa, 

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. ON. EASTENDERS

is currently doing the PR rounds, outlining and teasing The Brannings, post-Tanya. The Brannings, she says, will take a different direction. And well they should ... straight out of Walford.

And their satellites.

Actually, I take it back about Jossa being the worst actress ever in EastEnders. She's officially the second worst. Tonight, I made a new discovery ..

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS

Now all they have to worry about is consistency in writing.

Ever Evolving Daddy Issues.

Seriously, who'd want Michael Moon for a father?

There's a contingent of fangirls - or rather, silly-ass women - on Digital Spy, who regularly cream their knickers at the sight and sound of Michael Moon. One even craves a sexual encounter with someone of his ilk - in other words, a psychopath.

I've heard of women who like being treated badly by men, but, honestly ... a psychopath? Do these silly girls even know what a psychopath is?

If there were any lingering doubts about how "nice" Michael Moon is, that was dispelled last night and further dispelled tonight. And I hope it's finally sunken in with Alfie that this man is exactly how Alfie described him - a scumbag. 

His revelation to Tommy that he was his biological father was totally scurrilous. As Alfie said, he allowed Alfie to step up to the plate and wouldn't even look at the child. This isn't about substituting Tommy for Scarlett, as Kat with her convoluted sense of ill-logic thought. Michael was adamant on more than one occasion tonight that he wanted nothing to do with the child - whom he still refers to as "the child" or "the boy." He just told him that snippet of information simply because he had the opportunity and he could. And he did it because Alfie had something that he didn't - a child, or rather, his child, as he drove the point home to him about Alfie not being able to understand someone having two children who were kept from him.

A couple of words about that - first of all, Tommy wasn't "kept from" Michael. Both Alfie and Kat told him he could have access to him as much as he wanted. Michael walked away. Secondly, if he wanted to talk to a father whose children were being "kept from" him, he should try Phil Mitchell, who would have told him to grow up and grow a pair.

Michael is all too happy to fob responsibilities off onto someone else - the heavy duty work of running the boxing club to Jack, raising Tommy to Alfie, the day-to-day care of Alice to Roxy and/or Alice. He doesn't care. He doesn't give a rat's arse. What you saw tonight was the real Michael. This isn't poor-Michael-the-masochist, realising what a bad person he was and seeking punishment and allowing Alfie retribution. This was the psychopath grinding his heel on the emotions of people he disdains.

I wanted Alfie to throw that tit-toxic slattern of a wife out of the pub as well, now that his hand has been forced into turning his back on Tommy, because Kat - and I'm sorry, I have to say this - enabled this farce, giving Michael shelter, bigging up their "friendship" and encouraging him in his pursuit of Janine. Michael isn't the victim. He was proposing to scam Janine by bullying Alice into spying on her with a view to taking Scarlett from her. When Alice confessed what was going on to Janine, she reacted rightfully and left with the child.

Alice nailed Michael's dilemma right on the head the night he popped her cherry - he couldn't control everything. Now he's trying to manipulate the usual suspects into a show of sympathy for his poor, pathetic plight. These are the selfsame people he's screwed over before - Alfie, his cousin, by sleeping with and impregnating Alfie's wife; Kat, by doing just that and by scamming Jean; Roxy, but trying to turn her into Ronnie-lite and by playing evil mindgames with Ronnie; Jack, for the latter. And all of these people still treat him like a close bosom friend.

This man sexually manipulated Jack Branning's naive niece, a girl whose father is dead and for whom Jack should be feeling paternally proprietorial, and yet Jack allows him to stay in his flat! At least now, Alfie knows his cousin's true colours.

He is a scumbag. No less. And he should be treated thus, forthwith.

The scenes between Alfie and Tommy were heart-rending, with Shane Richie showing a real chemistry with the chatty little kid who plays Tommy. Even though Tommy repeated the words "Michael" and "daddy," I don't think a two-year old - DS commentators, Tommy isn't three until late December - would comprehend this relationship. With Alfie relinquishing parental authority of Tommy now, this will, however, confuse the child even more, because he's bonded with Tommy. This is what Alfie was on about earlier in the year regarding a visitation order, which Kat thought unnecessary; but Kat is not the fount of all common sense wisdom TPTB want us to think that she is.

I hope Roxy gets pregnant by Alfie. That would set the cat amongst the pigeons with Titface.

Or better yet, I hope Tommy's proven to be Alfie's biological son. Otherwise, we've just witnessed the evolution of yet another daddy issue.

Stranger in a Strange Land.

Well, actually there are two at the moment, in Walford - Sam the Sham and Carl-with-a-C, but I'm going to talk about the interesting one.

There's a pissy little soul on Walford Web - two actually - both of whom reckon they're the natural successor to the late Roger Ebert as a drama critic. That would be Jark the Jerk and sweet *Betty*, two lads who've never been parents, yet know more about parenting than parents, who've never taught yet know how teachers should speak and behave, and who haven't yet had any kind of job in the professional dramatic world, yet know more about it than anyone. And neither one is a genius, nor are they twenty-five yet.

Both confidently declaim that any good actor can work with a shit script and make it shine. Well, no, they can't. No one can make a silk purse from a sow's ear - *Betty* should know that (oink oink). But what a good actor can do is take a shit script and run with the tour de force element of the writing.

If a writer's given someone a kitsch script, he plays up the kitsch, he overstates, he states the bleeding obvious; and a lesser actor will play along with the ruse.

This is what we saw with Daniel Coonan again tonight. I understood perfectly what Coonan meant when he described Carl White as a Shakespearian villain. Think what you will of Iago and Shylock, but they were imminently watchable, although I doubt both the Walford Web bullybois would be familiar with either of these characters. White would know what he's talking about, however, since he's ex-RSC.

Tell you what, I'll bet Carl is one nasty piece of work, and I didn't need Kirsty to tell me how bad he was. And tell you something else, I'll bet he could make Michael Moon look like a pussy.

Carl's a villain, the likes of which EastEnders has never seen - no smooth operator like Steve Owen, no gentleman gangster like Jonnie Allen. Kirsty was engaged to him, and her relationship, prior to Max, with this man has been described as "abusive." Carl is the sort of person, for whom butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, sweet as sugar candy - that's how kumquats like Bianca the Retard and Alice easily open up to him, more than they should.

Even Holy Mother Slutter thought him "fit" at first, and he achieved even more through some sweet-talking to Bianca tonight, which proved how little Bianca knew about her Branning relations and how much she knows about her Beale ones.

Buy Bianca a coffee and she'll give up anything. She's an unattractive single mother with unattractive, hoydenish children, so any male attention is a bonus for her. When she asked Carl why he lied about Alice, Carl lied further: he just had to meet Alice because Derek talked about her all the time.

That wasn't retcon, folks, that was Carl lying outright. We all know Derek wasn't aware of Alice's existence until Alice made herself known to him. But Bianca wasn't aware of that. Oh, and poor pitiful Carl lies because that's what you do when you come out of prison, because the world treats you like a scumbag. And that's something with which Bianca would identify, without giving  too much away, the way she did about Uncle Ian, having been homeless this time last year, inadvertantly landing Ian in it by raising Carl's hackles. She was even defending his behaviour to the suspicious Kat and Kirsty, after Kirsty, his ex- warned both women that he was someone they really truly didn't want to get to know.

As for Ian, it was nice to see Ian revert to weaselly coward mode, trying to push Jean to the forefront to cover for him that evening. And although the dialogue was arch and pretty cheesy ("I want your blood"), it was quite entertaining watching Carl elicit the eventual truth from Ian - first that Derek was dead (something that Carl already knew), then finally, that Ian actually did use the ten grand stowed away in Derek's "box of tricks", a confession which gave Carl some leverage.

Line of the night:-

Carl: There. You told the truth. We can do business.

And Carl promptly goes the extortion route of demanding a payment of £500 per week from Ian. That's obviously just for starters. Carl's got an income now, and he'll most likely be commandeering Scarlett's for some sort of crooks' convention or whatever brouhaha he wants to cook up - with Ian doing the catering, of course.

One other interesting interplay tonight was Carl eventually finding the reason for his arrival in Walford - Kirsty, who's still maintaining the lie to him that she was pregnant. There was a line uttered in passing by Carl to Kirsty - that he's been clean for five years. So Carl is an addict? Obviously not the alcohol variety. I'm thinking more along the lines of cocaine.

This is going to be interesting, and Dan Coonan is a good actor breathing life into an interesting character - but, more's the pity, one with a short shelf life.

Enjoy him while he lasts.

Ein Zwei Drei Fier, Lift Your Stein and Drink Your Beer ...

Salamander, which means Lauren is as drunk as a fish.

Of course, the well-intentioned date catch-up with Peter goes awry - first because Lucy lies to Peter, telling him Lauren's just a binge drinker, then because Lucy sparks a drinkfest because - as much as Lauren will tell Tanya and Max next week that it's their behaviour which makes her drink, the impression I got tonight was that she was guzzling only because she couldn't bear to see her cousin with whom she regularly fucks, going out with Bag o'Bones Beale.

I've decided tonight that Lucy's eyes - or rather, her overdone eye make-up annoys me. Who the hell puts on false eyelashes to work in a cafe or chippie every day, and who also has the time to apply meticulously that Liz Taylor sloe-eyed mascara, tipping up at the end.

Hetti Bywater is playing the daughter of a lightweight businessman from East London. This is not the catwalk at the London Fashion Show. Working over steaming cookers all day would only melt so much mascara and make the eyelashes become detached. Who wants to reach down in a bag of chips and pick out someone's false eyelashes. Yuck.

In fact, Lauren could have used Lucy's eye make-up, considering she looked like Morticia Addams in a mini-skirt.

Poor Peter Beale. I fear the worst from him. And since when did Peter start calling Tanya and Max by their Christian names?

Jossa's acting is bearable, until she goes into drunken mode, and then her limits are all too painfully apparent. It's a blessing that they're moving her away from alcohol; now the next thing they want to do is stop her from being aware that the camera is on her. She's all too aware and all too in love with herself. Play to the audience, damn it, not to the mirror. And lay off the collagen.

These scenes are when the show began to stink, nonetheless because David Witts's unintelligible presence had to be endured, with subtitles. How long before Carl, the well-spoken nemesis of Derek, makes his presence known to Joey? Maybe he could give him elocution lessons.

Axe, Please ...

Sam, Ava and Kim.

Those scenes were totally and utterly embarrassing. Sam surreptitiously flirting with a preening Ava in the cafe ... Ava preening. Gosh, she reminded me of this ...

Yes, one night with Sam the Sham has reduced The Magic Negro to the preening, shambling Prissy from Gone With the Wind.

This was a poor attempt at a comic love non-triangle, with Kim obviously on the pull for Sam, and Sam and Ava sneaking around sophomorically to have sex in Sam's room. 

OMIGOD! What if Jay is upstairs?

This is supposedly a 49 year-old Deputy Head teacher, an educated woman? And where does Sam get his money? He hardly seems to be doing any building work, except putting in a few lights here and there.

And I see Carl has joined the affluent band of waifs and strays who've settled into the sixty-quid-a-night B and B. He has yet to meet Shirley.

Ava and her non-story are non-starters. She's a luxury character inserted into the frame of things, along with her irrelevant son and equally irrelevant ex at the whim of the current producer. Their screentime means less screentime for more important characters. They are an epic fail. Lorraine Newman should realise this.

No one gives a rat's arse, and Clare Perkins is a joke. As is her character.

Mediocrity has returned.